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I am currently student teaching in an 8th grade classroom and beleive to be doing an alright job thus far.  However, I have found that I have a little difficulty getting my students to get their attention back to me in between activities.  I have heard of some suggestions like call and response methods, but my studnets have not responded well to them.  Does anyone have any suggestions that may help my situation.  Thank you in advance!

Hi Zachary. With your grade level, I’m not surprised that call and response methods aren’t working so well. Once they hit that middle school age, students are “too cool” for things like that. Getting them refocused and back on the task at hand is completely essential. At my school, we have implemented some GLAD techniques across grade levels. The middle school teachers swore by the Signal Word method. The basic concept is that you choose a key term and vocabulary word to use for the day/week. Students explore the word, and you use it for your transitions. I’ve tried it in my own classroom and my third graders were very receptive to it. Now, all of our transitions are guided by the signal word and students know that they need to hear it and repeat it before making their transitions. It’s working in our middle school as well so hopefully it works for you too! I don’t have a direct link but if you type in GLAD strategy signal word into Google it’ll come up with lots of useful links from other schools and directly from GLAD that explain in more detail how to implement the strategy. Hope this helps!